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Hello to all my wonderful friends and family,
Martha and I are currently in Franz Josef, one of the glaciers, making our way down South. Trip started off fairly well...sort of. We drove up to Taupo the first night, and camped out there. Did a bit of sight seeing, then went on to Rotorua. Rotorua is where zorbing has been made famous but instead we chose to go white water rafting. It was good fun, and a nice day to be on the water. We also checked out a thermal park, where giant puddles of bubbling mud are spread across the reserve. The smell of sulfur is sometimes hard to take, but it was cool to see. In those two days, we managed to kill the battery in our car (luckily there were people around with booster cables) then lock our key inside the car with our cell phones as well so we had to call AA from the tourist site..apparently its not NZAA, guess cuz there's no other automobile assocation around! Thank goodness we were in between two larger cities so they got to us in about 20 minutes...would have been a disaster if we had done that in a remote location especially with no phones. Then we made our way up to Tauranga, where Mike is from (its very beautiful, right on the ocean and nice and warm) and then on to the Coromandal, which is a peninsula on the east coast. I never realized how car sick I get on hills! It was quite the windy drive, fun to drive standard on but we had an automatic. We both drove and its really not that hard to adjust, after a while it doesnt even feel like youre driving on the wrong side. The Coromandal is so far mine and Martha's favourite place, we woke up in the morning after camping out and went for a walk along the beach. So beautiful. (Though it took us two hours driving in the dark and a couple of dirt roads to find out campsite) Next we took of to Auckland and met up with Mike. We stayed in a hostel which was a nice change after having camped out in the cold for a few days. Then we hit the town..sort of..one bar later and it was bedtime since we had to be up early to catch out flight to the South Island. Only problem is that Martha's phone had somehow switched times and was 20 minutes behind so she didnt realize she was running late. After dropping Mike off at his car, we raced to the airport and couldnt find the drop off for our car. We missed our flights and had to be pay the difference in cost for a later one about an hour after ours. Luckily flights from Auckland to anywhere in the country are fairly frequent. But talk about road trip mishaps! So far things have gone smoothly down here..fingers crossed! When we flew in, we drove to Hanmer Springs with is a small resort town. I loved it, and it really reminded me of small town West Coast Canada, like Canmore. We hung out in the sulphur hot springs (basically a water park with a whole bunch of naturally heated hot tubs), then drove down to Arthurs Pass where we spent the night. We couldnt find our campsite so instead we drove into a spot in front of a lake and stayed there. We both barely slept since the birds were so loud! There are so many bird species here that we're not even sure what was making all the noise. It sounded like something was dying. A little nerve rracking now knowing whats out there but at least we didnt have to worry about bears or wolves! Not much can happen to you while camping when birds, hedgehogs and possums are the only animals sharing your space. We woke up to a gorgeous view of the mountains and a small lake, was defintely worth stopping there. We drove through Castle Hill, which is a great spot for rock climbing, and past Flock Hill which is where they filmed the battle scene for the first Narnia. Last night we stayed at a campsite in a little town called Okarito (population 35.Not 3500, a total of thirty five. Maybe theyre all one family??) Its actually a good spot for kiwi spotting, however no such luck. Okarito was the perfect place for me to begin my manual driving lesson, which Martha is kindly offering. Talk about concentration, staying on the other side AND shifting. Defintiely got a few laughs from the Okaritans. But I will be stellar at it by the time I leave! Hopefully. Right now we're at Franz Josef glacier, then on to Wanaka and Queenstown (two top spots for adventure tourism) Might consider skydiving in Wanaka but its fairly expensive. If the weather clears up, it is definitely a possibility. Not a great day to see the glaicers since its fairly overcast but we'll make the best of what we have!
I'll post pics when Im back in Welly, and update you on the rest of my trip. Bye for now!
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